Bill Gates gave WHO $300 million in 2013. Global health is ruled by a few donors who make decisions in secret and heed their own interests-The Philanthropy Hustle, Private foundations are part of the problem, not the solution-Jacobin, L. McGoey

In 2014, the Gates Foundation announced an $11 million grant to Mastercard to establish a financial inclusion “lab” in Nairobi, Kenya. The grant will last three years, after which Mastercard has indicated that, should the venture prove sufficiently lucrative, the company may be willing to foot the bill for further financial expansion in the region.

Mastercard’s management rationalized the grant in economic terms: investing in developing nations such as Kenya is risky, and there’s no guarantee that investments will pay off. As Mastercard explains in a press release, the money from the Gates Foundation enables the company to reach “new markets that may otherwise be commercially unviable.”

The problem is that there’s little evidence to back this remarkable assertion.On the one hand, there’s no doubt that the Gates Foundation has done some good in the field of global health. But at the same time, it’s clear that, whatever the opinions of Singer and others, the foundation is not spending its money on the largest global health killers.

“[We need] to take farmers exactly where they are at the moment, and help them be more productive using their knowledge, and technology that would be appropriate to add to it, and then gradually move them into a higher rate of production, rather than talking about them buying Monsanto products, or other kinds of products that they can’t afford and have to buy every year, as in the case of hybrid seed.”

Criticism has also come from unexpected corners: Howard Buffett, the eldest son of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, suggested on 60 Minutes in 2011 that the Gates Foundation’s bullish optimism about hybrid seeds is blind to the circumstances of developing nations: “We need to quit thinking about trying to do it like we do it in America.”

Corporate philanthropy today is about private, tax-exempt donors such as the Gates Foundation giving their charity to corporations.

The Gates Foundation is not the only philanthropic foundation offering donations to for-profits such as Mastercard. Other institutions such as the Ford Foundation have also given direct donations to for-profit firms, especially media companies, while the Wellcome Trust, Britain’s largest philanthropic organization, often makes grants to pharmaceutical companies.

These are not endowment investments. Over the years, the Gates Foundation has faced a steady chorus of complaints for its penchant for investing its endowment in the same companies that perpetuate the environmental and health problems that its gift-giving aims to ameliorate. This practice is different, however. The Mastercard donation is also not an equity investment, either. They are donations that help to reduce corporate overhead, allowing some of the world’s wealthiest companies to offset the cost of expanding in new markets. Companies are not obligated to repay the grants, regardless of how profitable the gifts end up being.